The News of the World is facing an inquiry over its role in the collapse of the court case into the alleged kidnap plot of Victoria and David Beckham.

The Press Complaints Commission will say it has taken the unusual decision to initiate its own inquiry into the case, despite not having received an official complaint.

Sir Christopher Meyer, the chairman of the PCC, told The Observer that serious questions had been raised during the case when it was revealed that an undercover reporter for the NoW had paid a witness in the case £10,000.

The case was dismissed and two of the defendants are considering legal action against the newspaper.

The PCC move comes 24 hours before the House of Commons Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport publishes its inquiry into press and privacy. It is expected to call for greater powers for the PCC to regulate the worst excesses of the press.

The select committee is likely to criticise the sanctions available to the PCC to force a newspaper to carry an apology or publish a critical adjudication if it breaches the rules on reporting.

Although it will not call for a new law of privacy, it will say the PCC is in danger of being seen to be 'in the pock ets of newspapers' because it is paid for by the industry it regulates.

Sources close to the committee said the report would call for greater transparency during its investigations, an external audit of its work and more 'pro-active' investigations into areas of media concern.

It will also call for a crackdown on intrusive reporting, including the taking of pictures of celebrities, and will criticise the editor of the Sun, Rebekah Wade, who admitted when she was editor of the NoW that reporters paid police for information.

However, the report was undermined last night when documents obtained by The Observer revealed sharp criticisms of the committee's methods by the PCC.

In a position paper put together by Guy Black, the PCC director, the committee is accused of holding unfair meetings in private, coming to conclusions on press self-regulation before it had heard all the evidence, and that MPs on the committee had little grasp of the details of how self-regulation works.

'The committee's report must therefore be read in the light of its clear lack of any basic factual grip, and it must be assumed that it will be premised on a plethora of inaccuracies,' the PCC document says.

Officials at the PCC said that the organisation would respond 'robustly' to any suggestion it should be able to fine newspapers who breach the code.

'When lawyers and politicians talk about sharper teeth, stronger sanctions, they nearly always have in mind money,' Meyer said. 'Once you get into money you get into lawyers, you have people demanding rights of appeal, you are going to have everything slowed down, actually you don't have the PCC any more, you have something quite dif ferent. Two of the virtues of the PCC are that it is free and it is fast.'